Blackest Night Disussion Thread (Spoilers)

I was expecting a bang to start things off (after all this is a eight issue mini series) and boy did we get one. More Lanterns were revealed, a couple were created and the Oans were attacked on Oa already as Scar began her assault of the Guardians. I only flipped through the issue with the intention of buying it but once the owner stated that Diamond screwed them on the Black Lantern rings I decided it wasn't worth dropping the five bucks canadian. I will be following the series but will be getting it in Hardcover next summer when it comes out. This should make up for the debacle that was Final Crisis last year.

I was a Green Lantern fan during the Kyle Rayner era--Hal was actually my least favorite GL to be honest--but I dabbled here and there with the Green Lantern Corps after the Sinestro War. Blackest Night may signal my return full fold into the GL Universe though.

This is going to be a horror story to be remembered, but I couldn't help but think more than anything that this will ultimately end with the return of a fully restored J'Onn to the Justice League and Bruce Wayne as Batman...

Yeah well I hope my other comic store has some left over when I go in next week, other wise I'm going to be pissed. I wonder if the Batman thing isn't going to be dealt with right away because Morrison is trying to establish Dick as Batman which I'm loving right now.

I don't know why, but it never occurred to me that Ralph and Sue would be raised up as Black Lanterns. And their appearance really rattled me--to say nothing of what they did to Carter and Kendra.

Somehow J'onn didn't bother me as much--perhaps because his resurrection as a BL was pretty well-publicized.

(As is the as-yet unrevealed rise of Kal-L... which has enraged a friend of mine so much that he apparently has sworn off DC for good. I don't agree with him passing judgment without having actually read any of the series yet, but then, he's kind of an odd sort.)

An interesting thought occurs--of the canonical eight founders of the JLA (Superman, Batman/Bruce, Wonder Woman, GL/Hal, Flash/Barry, Aquaman/Arthur, J'onn, and Black Canary) Dinah's the only one who is either not currently dead or has not been dead and then come back to life.

(That's if you want to truly count Dinah--she was shoehorned in to take WW's place after Crisis on Infinite Earths removed the Trinity from the JLA's founding, and left in after Infinite Crisis put them back.)

Meanwhile, I read Tales of the Corps as well. Interesting to get our first real look at the Indigo Tribe. Unless I'm missing the point, it looks as though their rings and battery/staffs can absorb and control the energies of the other corps' rings. An interesting thought... in my mind, I'm drawing some kind of analogy to compassion being the ability to feel for others--or, perhaps more correctly in this instance, to feel what others feel. Since the Indigos have no dialogue in a language we can understand, it's a bit fuzzy yet. It seems like they could have a big part to play in the resolution of the War of Light... the ability to absorb and reproduce the powers of the other corps is a pretty heavy one. The drawback would seem to be that they're close to one end of the spectrum, and thus more susceptible to being controlled by their power than the more 'centered' colors.

All in all, I'm looking forward to this in a big way. I know Geoff Johns has his critics--though I'm not one of them--but I'm also a GL fan from way back, and with the first two chapters of this 'trilogy' (Rebirth and The Sinestro Corps War) I think John's is two for two. So my hopes are high for the third chapter.

The Hardcover I'm guessing won't be out until at least late March or April if Blackest Night is on schedule and there are no delays. It's eight issues and the first came out today so doing a quick count the final issue should be out sometime Feburary 2010 and it is normally a couple months before DC releases their major Hardcovers. Final Crisis didn't come out until last month and it ended I think in a few months ago. We'll have a good ten months I'd guess before it comes out which sucks.

Blackest Night is part three of a trilogy. Part one was Green Lantern Rebirth. Part two was the Sinestro Corps War. And then basically every issue of GL and GLC since then has been introducing the various Corps. I understand the most recent arcs on both titles were the most relevant (GL Agent Orange, GLC Emerald Eclipse). As for the larger DCU, you just need to know who's died in the past five years I guess.

Blackest Night is part three of a trilogy. Part one was Green Lantern Rebirth. Part two was the Sinestro Corps War. And then basically every issue of GL and GLC since then has been introducing the various Corps. I understand the most recent arcs on both titles were the most relevant (GL Agent Orange, GLC Emerald Eclipse). As for the larger DCU, you just need to know who's died in the past five years I guess.

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Thanks. I guess I have a homework assignment now--at least a year's worth of Green Lantern/Sinestro Corps stories. I have most of the Green Lantern issues, but few of the Green Lantern Corps issues. I don't follow the latter title.

Geoff has also said as recently as a couple of weeks ago that you don't need to read the Blackest Night tie-ins to read and undersand Blackest Night. Yes its part of a larger story, being the trilogy that Mr. Light wrote about but it's not like Final Crisis where you have to gobble up half a dozen other books to get what's going on. The Blackest Night prelude is pretty much what was posted above as well. They're all coming out in Hardcover by the end of the fall/year.

Wow. This was a let down. More like Meh-est Night. It was a by-the-numbers first issue and it just didn't do anything for me.

Like a lot of folks, I'd been waiting for this since it was announced....and as time has progressed, I've been more wary of it. The two year lead in has been severely lacking (contrast that with the Great Darkness Saga's far shorter and ten thousand times better lead in) in awesomeness.

Even with two years, it felt rushed. The various Corps should've been established for several years before we went with the 21st Century version of GLC vs. Nekron and the dead again.

I really wonder if Geoff Johns has anything left to really make this series be the stand out that it should be.

Seeing hundreds of Black Lantern rings flying through space? Seen it before years ago when he had hundreds of green rings flying through space. Or when he had hundreds of yellow rings flying through space. Or, when after a majorly devastating battle between the GLC and SC, we had hundreds of green AND yellow rings flying through space, intertwining with each other.

I think we even had a hundreds of red rings flying through space scene as well, though feel free to correct me.

A spooky ring Corps? Yeah, their zombies. And all of them together, in the two page spread, lack the creepy-ness of a couple of the Sinestro Corps members. I found pretty much everyone associated with the Black Lanterns funny looking in the cliche' zombie way. All it needed was a "braaaaaaains" word balloon to really make it. I would've found that far more enjoyable than "rise".

Crazy violence? After Sinestro Corps War and some of the stuff from Infinite Crisis, not to mention the various monthly books....what's left that has any shock value?
Nothing in this book, that's for sure.

Bad guys that feel like evil bad asses? None here. Again, I almost laughed at the drawing of Black Hand licking Bruce Waynes skull. It had "look at how gross I am" all over it and felt too obvious. Ralph and Sue were evil because they were trying to be funny and mean at the same time. (rolls eyes)

And they killed Hawkman and Hawkgirl? All it means is that Didio found a way to get rid of Johns awesome Hawkman and will attempt to foist Katar Hol on us again as he continues restructuring the DCU to the way it was in his childhood in the 70s. Their death is completely meaningless because they'll be back. Not even an issue on that one.

Everyone thinks they'll be bringing back tons of dead characters back by the end. Who cares? They've already brought back Earth-Two Superman in IC, Hal Jordan and more recently Barry Allen......those three returns were the only one's that have any real "Holy Shit!" factor and they've been done. Who gives a crap if they bring back Ronnie Raymond, outside of an incredibly small fanbase? Hell, I collected Firestorm in the 80's and *I* don't care if they bring him back. Ditto for just about every character that Hal shows Barry.

I've read this book a few times, just to make sure I didn't miss anything the first time. Just as the current regime felt the need to redo some of the biggies from their teenage years, like Crisis and Great Darkness Saga's (and did second rate jobs of it) it's not surprising that they'd be doing "Tales Of The Green Lantern Corps" for the 21st century. While their previous redo's were fair to middling, this one might ultimately turn out good. But GLC vs. the dead has been done before.

(While typing this post I ran across this article http://diamondrock.blogspot.com/search?q=Nekron trying to get the name of the original mini correct...it's about the GLC's war with Nekron. The author makes the case that Nekron is probably the big bad behind the BLC, and it was certainly my first thought when I heard about BN.)

I've been slowly souring on DC for awhile now. Bringing back Barry Allen pretty much hardened my resolve and I'd had Blackest Night in mind as the last big event before calling it quits with superhero comics. This first issue didn't do anything to change my mind in the slightest and actually made the case for it. I really hope the next issue does something worth a damn....something that actually doesn't feel like a tired retread.

On a related note, the only two books in my subscription were Blackest Night and Star Trek: Crew. Ahhh, the look on the clerks face when I told him I really came in to get Crew #5, and his comments were priceless. He couldn't believe I was picking up a Byrne book over Blackest Night.

Geoff has also said as recently as a couple of weeks ago that you don't need to read the Blackest Night tie-ins to read and undersand Blackest Night. Yes its part of a larger story, being the trilogy that Mr. Light wrote about but it's not like Final Crisis where you have to gobble up half a dozen other books to get what's going on.

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Yeah, I actually skipped Rebirth and Sinestro Corps War, but I thought Blackest Night #1 had a good amount of introductory material for people just coming aboard for the first time.

While it helps to have a basic understanding of the Green Lanterns and the Guardians (as well as the more recent major events in the DC Universe), I think Blackest Night does a good job of being both a self-contained story as well as part of a much larger story.

So here's what I don't understand...how for someone like Sue and Ralph who've been running around as Ghost Detectives, does this affect them? I'm assuming that anyone who becomes a Black Lantern is evil because they don't have a soul.....but since we have seen Sue and Ralph since they "died", it makes me wonder what they think of the desecration of their bodies?

And since Ralph had long ago given up drinking Gingold, how did his corpse stretch? I also was not aware his body had ever been removed from Fate's tower after the Black Adam miniseries. Was this covered anywhere, or did Johns just screw up somehow? I don't think a Black Lantern ring would be capable of breaching Dr Fate's Tower's defenses.

And One Guardian is able to take down the rest of the council? Even augmented by unknown powers? Couldn't they just blast her into atoms when she was chowing down on the other Guardian?

Thanks for the link on Nekron. The blogger's theory certainly sounds plausible. I could see GJ resurrecting him and making him over. I haven't been a deep follower of GL recently, but I have read Rebirth, Wanted: Hal Jordan, Secret Origins, and the Sinestro Corps War, courtesy of the local library. I like what GJ has done with Black Hand, but he still felt too small a villain for me to believe he is the main guy behind the Black Lanterns. Nekron would make more sense.